Six Things I’d Like To See In Planetside 2

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I’ve made a list! The items herein are probably not all entirely likely or reasonable, but neither am I. These are just the things I think would make the game 5000% more like the ultimate space manshoot that I am searching for. I know everyone playing Planetside 2 has their own quibbles and developmental priorities, this is just my pie in the sky wish list.

Onwards!

Track IR Support

If you’ve ever played Arma 2, or indeed just DayZ, you will probably be aware that you can hold down Alt to look around with your head, independently of where your arms are pointing your gun. This is useful for all kinds of reasons, but not least because you can glance behind you when you’re running along. Making the head move separately to the rest of the body has another benefit, too, it enables use of a peripheral called TrackIR, which is a very clever thing. Here’s a video that explains it.

Now imagine being able to glance behind your PS2 tank as you reverse it, or look over your shoulder as you snipe down a valley. Yeah.

An Infantry-Carried Target Designator

This is pretty common in real-world warfare: a target designator carried by infantry so that they can mark enemy units for attack. This would need to work in conjunction with something, so perhaps a tank-busting missile launched from a galaxy or liberator, or a pin-point artillery piece. (We don’t need any more explosion spam in the game, clearly.) More team-work, more awesome.

A Better Map

The map is being merged with respawning, to improve your oversight on where you land after death, but my feeling is that the entire map needs a rethink. It’s not simply about the amount of information on there, it’s also the clarity and readability of the thing. It doesn’t leap out at you quite clearly enough where you are or what you should be doing. Perhaps when the game introduces aids for colour-blindness the map will be clearer generally.

The Harasser

SOE are bringing us a four-man buggy in June, which will be great. But I miss this light attack buggy, I really do. The reason being that it was a small, fast, weak two-man machine that made pairing up with a chum easy and effective. Sure, there are some multi-man vehicles, but they are large and slow. The old harasser from Planetside 1 was perfect for scouting, or, well harrassing, particularly if you were a couple of snipers or similar hit and run characters. Bring it back, SOE, I’d actually pay for it.

A Sunderer Towbar, Towable Things

The Sunderer, Planetside 2’s handsome battle bus and respawning station, is exactly the kind of vehicle that should be able to tow things. So how about a deployable anti-tank turret and a deployable anti-air turret? Or perhaps it could drop off mobile defences, or healing and re-arming supply crates. Or perhaps a rack of flashes that can be grabbed and used by scouts. Or a recon drone-launcher for surveillance. There are loads of possibilities.

Flight Model / Joystick

This seems unlikely to change now, but I don’t particularly like the way aircraft handle in Planetside 2, and I’d really like to see something that’s a little more realistic that would support something that the PC has in strange abundance: flight sticks. Sure, it’s perfectly playable as it is, it just doesn’t feel quite right, and that means I won’t ever be comfortable with being a sky-jockey.

I Love my Scyth speced to A2A it is devastating. It’s also great fun leading pursuers on a merry chase on the deck weaving through support struts and trees and hearing people crashing as they try to pusue always leaves a smile on my face

Whether or not the planes can turn on a dime doesn’t stop his point being correct that flying requires more skill than other parts of the game, and who really flies in 3rd person? I flick to it for extra awareness of ground based targets but I can tell you I’m more likely to crash in 3rd person than 1st And 3rd person is pretty much required for tanks as TK’ing allies is so easy in them, especially the Magrider.

There are problems with flight but the model and “lack of skill” aren’t among them. The biggest thing I’d like to have is freelook in the cockpit so that I can (for example) look to the left to see where that other ESF went without having to turn my own ESF. This is a common feature of combat flight simulators and is usually achieved by holding down a key and moving the mouse.

Given that all of the aircraft in PS2 are VTOL, the flight model will not be the same as that of a traditional fixed-wing aircraft. I’d say they’ve done a pretty good job, the ESFs for example suffer from poor yaw authority while at low speed (correct for a VTOL aircraft whose primary flight controls are still aerodynamic).

Yes, the flight model would be identical. A VTOL aircraft doesn’t violate physics like the aircraft in PS2 do. A VTOL aircraft spends the overwhelming majority of its time using conventional flight surfaces to generate lift.

In PS2 you can watch when an aircraft stops using wings and the fuselage to generate lift and starts using its engines. The issue is that the game always treats it like the engines are generating the lift itself, despite it being physically impossible when it is in forward flight.

The aircraft are sloppy at best and generally terrible science fiction. A modern day gunship helicopter, not even a conventional fixed wing fighter, would slaughter them all in air to air combat.

The Mosquito’s engines pivot up and down for VTOL, there’s no reason they can’t provide some lift in forward flight by positioning themselves at an angle. In fact, if you press Space to vertically ascend while flying forward, you’ll notice two things: your forward speed decreases, and your vertical speed will be less than if you were hovering in place and ascending. Furthermore, this method of increasing altitude is less efficient (slower) than simply pulling up on your stick while in forward flight and gaining altitude aerodynamically. That’s not physically impossible at all, in fact it’s entirely plausible. The Reaver’s engines appear to have vanes that provide a similar function. As for the Scythe, well, we can assume that it likely makes use of the same technology seen in the Magrider, so its flight controls won’t conform to those of traditional aircraft.

Because they have unlimited fuel and (presumably) very, very powerful engines, the aircraft in PS2 can be flown in ways that real VTOL aircraft cannot, or will not. Methinks there are many people hating on the flight model that don’t actually understand flight dynamics…

The flight model doesn’t make sense even for VTOL craft. Have a look at the VTOL vents on the Reaver, they’re facing down as you’d expect, so why when you bank the aircraft 90 degrees left or right, does it keep flying straight and level? It shouldn’t. The VTOL jets should push it into a bank and presumably a dive too.

Also you can see the control surfaces moving, so it clearly still needs those, so they should have the same effect as on modern aircraft.

Face it, it’s an arcade model designed not to scare off people who don’t play flight sims, but for people who actually enjoy their flight sims, it’s plain weird.

I can’t remember off the top of my head either. A sensible design would close the VTOL vents during forward flight so that all of your thrust was devoted to accelerating you forward. It would then behave just like a normal aircraft.

I fly real aircraft, and believe me, I CAN quite happily fly along upside down. Gets painful after a few minutes, but there’s nothing stopping me from doing it as long as I like.

That said, the ‘aircraft’ in PS2 have nothing to do with real aerodynamics, they’re sloppily designed sci-fi-flyer thingies that control more like FPS characters than aircraft. As evidenced by all VS pilots using their Scythes as power armour, sliding around the sky sideways shooting things on the ground. But I’d be very happy if I could only use my joystick/controller to fly my Mosquito, and look around with TrackIR. Dogfights are currently impossible in PS2, as you can’t look at the target and maneuver at the same time – as soon as he flies off the screen, that’s it, since your head is strapped to the headrest or something and your eyeballs glued rigidly into their (narrow) sockets.

I’m an aerospace engineer, but I give the Scythes a pass on their bizzare sci-fi flight model, simply because if I had access to the kind of technology used to levitate Magriders I would probably make some pretty outrageously unconventional aircraft with it.

As for dogfighting, you can freelook in the cockpit, apparently. I’m not sure what the keybind is but people are telling me it’s there.

As someone who does and uses pretty much everything in the game, flying is the most skill intensive out of all of it. ESF’s go down extremely fast. Sure occasionally you can pick off a tank or a couple of infantry that are on their own and unsupported but being of any use in a medium sized battle with AA and other aircraft around is totally different.

Really happy with the improved minimap, it’s much easier to read. If the main map had markings for platoons/squads it could be a lot more obvious where your team is focused. The changes to bases have also helped assaults and defence get less caught up on chokepoints.

I am not enjoying the devastator/annihilator at all. Whilst it’s good for the infantry it’s awful for vehicles as you rarely have just one guy shooting at you and now they have much more effective weapons if they hit. Feels like it’s a big oversight in balance when vehicles already suffer from the huge amount of HA running around… reminded me of Battlefield Vietnam where they had to rework the class that got a light machine gun and anti vehicle rocket launcher for being too good at everything.

That’s not infiltrating,or even good sniping. It’s camping. Yeah, you can do that, but it’s boring, and seldom all that helpful. A good infiltrator can harass and distract a whole pile of enemy infantry, and even keep vehicles busy on a good day. A great one can neutralise an air force, or open a second front inside an enemy base. The only thing that can’t do directly is fight vehicles, although they can sometimes prevent the vehicles from existing in the first place.

Camping, heh. On a side not, it always amuses me how people in video games criticize camping when this is exactly what real-life snipers do. The game is not aiming to be real life, of course, but it is still funny.

I’d be happy with some CPU optimisation for now. Still seems desperately wonky on a whole lot of PC configs, including some very bling ones.

Definitely with you on the flight too. It just feels odder than any other flight model I’ve come across for a long time. And having yaw on keyboard and pitch/roll on mouse makes everything feel very strange for any dogfighting – though that setup undeniably preferable with joysticks, when/if they get them working.

Don’t know if you have a multi core cpu but if you do a search for unpark cpu, or something to that affect, you can unpark all your cores so that you have access to them all the time. Apparently there is a power-saving feature in some that parks all the cores except your main one. I don’t know all the technical jargon but it made a HUGE difference on my old machine. Did this with my i5 quad core and I’m flying!

Speaking of which I love the flight mechanics in this game. It’s sufficiently difficult that all but the uninitiated will figure it out.

Seconded like hell. Shouldn’t be too long. They’ve got the star citizen deadline for an awful lot of things me thinks, what with the boarding on top of everything else :). I look forward to seeing what they pull out of the bag.

1) A resource system that doesn’t reward playing on the continent where you have the most land
2) Weapons that don’t cost £5 a pop. What ridiculous prices. Especially on MAXes, where you have to buy each arm seperately o.0
3) A a huge, radioactive crater where The Crown is right now

4) Get rid of the flinch mechanic. Playing infantry against TR is fucking misery because of this and how high their RPM is.

The Crown is working precisely as intended: an irresitable lure for the TR, who are completely obsessed with it for some reason.
I do agree with you entirely about the flinch mechanic and TR bullet spam though.

A traitor like you could never understand. Why don’t you just go back to betraying humanity instead of commenting on the tactical acumen of superior, loyal minds?

That and it’s a useful place to spawn MBTs if you’re pushing down from the Northern warpgate as TR once was, at least as long as you’re not bottled up. Resource wise it’s pretty much a non-entity though, and spawning any aircraft there is begging to be torn apart by the chatter of a few dozen bursters.

Still, I’ve got great fondness for the region. Assaulting the Crown is always a nightmare and defending it a meatgrinder, but there’s always an interesting fight going on in the territories around it. Ti Alloys, Ceres Hydroponics and the Crossroads Watchtower have seen many great battles and continue to be great fun now that I’m rolling into them from the South West.

I do wish Esamir and Amerish saw the same level of conflict on a regular basis though.

You are a crazy person. The areas /around/ the Crown are great, sure, but attacking the Crown itself is utter misery. Late night when the only fight on Miller is there, I just log off instead of playing.

TR do not have especially fast firing guns and now the sound has been fixed so it doesn’t play two bullets for each one fired you can hear it. They have larger magazines and worse accuracy bloom that makes them less accurate in sustained fire meaning they need those extra bullets. The faction that benefits most from flinch is vs, unless you are talking about the tr pistol.

1. Yes, you should get resources from all three continents.
2. Buy SC on double or triple SC days and spend it when weapons are on sale. I spent $20 on SC a while back, got everything I want for my character, and I still have more than 3000 SC left.
3. The Crown is awesome. It’s the only territory that encourages you to take surrounding territories before you take it.

A commander. Someone selected by SOE to be the commander for a day or two each week by SOE, and weekly or monthly rota for them. No idea how they would select commanders though. A pay to command system would likely lead to Military disasters 18th century style (although this could be very entertaining). They could select players based on rank though.

Better command system in general.

Much better tutorials, or information. This game is really bewildering to new players.

I actually have been wondering for a while why they haven’t set up a decent command system. Having the ability for each faction to elect an overall leadership with a clear chain of command would do wonders for the meta-game and likely add a bit more substance to what is going on in the game.

Add in an integral and decent voice-com system that allows you to have voice communications set to local and squad by default and then allow squad leaders to interact with a territory wide command channel and then a continent wide command channel with the ability for higher up people in the chain of command able to moderate the channels and also talk directly to squad leaders as needed would help an awful lot.

yeah, the real issue with the game imo, is the mass mob of headless chickens phenomenon that you experience most of the time. I get a better game experience when playing with the RPS crew but often it can just be bedlam.

Command is pointless until we have something to fight over, a way of keeping the troops in line (my vote is commissars with customizable hats), and more importantly, a way to actually win. You can have resource trains perfect discipline all you like, but endless zerg rush just doesn’t have a sense of accomplishment. The bane of teleporting. To be honest, i think they they should lock out the option for several hexes in every direction for friendly zones once one is lost so that something approaching tactical acumen comes into play. Making the loss sting would be nice too. If we ever do get player conquerable territory, i hope it’s a PS2 version of Day Z for those who want something beyond deathmatch.

The problem with an improved flight model based around using joysticks is that it is likely to turn the air warfare side of the game into a two tiered system between those players who have joysticks and those who don’t. Experience of playing other multiplayer gamers where this divide exists informs me that this is a very, very, bad idea if they want to preserve balance and fun.

As it is the flight model isn’t great, and it does play a little too much like descent, but at the same time its a relatively level playing field. And frankly I don’t want to play a game where the fact that I don’t have a joystick means that 9 times out of 10 I’ll lose a dogfight against someone who does.

I don’t understand why people complain about the flight model. Of course it’s nothing close to realistic but this is a SF game. All aircraft in PS2 is VTOL so there are a lot of weird maneuvers possible but FFS it’s the FUTURE ! Give it some slack.
As for improving the game:
Laser designators – YES ! More teamwork = more fun.
Deployable AV and AA turrets, barricades etc. – YES ! Gives squads mobility and flexibility.
Resource revamp – Resources are WAAAAY too expendable right now.
RENDER DISTANCE ! It’s getting worse for me every update ! All was good in beta and now it sucks. I can’t see people from 50 m away now.

Yep, I love the VTOL nature of the PS2 flight model, it really lets you pull off some great moves when you get the hang of it. The flight in PS2 IS difficult to learn, but once it ‘clicks’ it feels spot on to me. I wouldn’t want to dumb it down for ease of access as you would lose some of it’s versatility.

More deployable stuff would be really sweet, especially if they replaced the current lock on weapons as long distance anti tank and anti air weapons. Having a deployable anti-tank gun would allow infantry to set up a strong point and fire at tanks over long distances but it would not let them spawn endlessly and fire a missile, then die. A deployable turret would also be easier to render over long distances. People manning deployed turrets would be vulnerable to infantry, which rocketspamming HA is not with the current mechanics.

Giving the same class extra shield an LMG and a rocket launcher really is mind boggingly stupid. BF:Vietnam tried this, it was stupid then. PS2 does it, its still stupid. Going anti-vehicle, especially long distance anti-vehicle with a lock-on fire and forget system should require you to give up your anti infantry capabilities.

Love the attackbuggy plans, really hope they will have some sort of TOW or similar anti tank gun on them.

More zoom levels to the minimap would be extremely useful, right now if you are fighting for a smaller base it often is impossible to tell if a map blip is inside, outside or even if its left or right of a building since the blip covers the entire building.

I think the current resource model needs tweaking, especially for vehicles. At the moment it is pretty much an on/off switch for getting vehicles where I’d prefer a smoother curve between scarcity and plenty.

Heavy infantry need to be really changed up as they are far too versatile with a single build at present. Force them to choose between rockets/missiles and the LMG would be a start.

Would be pretty interesting if resources just reduced the cooldown so if you have high resources you can spawn vehicles more often. If you are low you can still spawn vehicles but with a longer cooldown. Should let beleaguered factions try to break out from a warpgate but give the advantage to the team able to secure resource bases.

Concerning TrackIR: Please also include the alternatives. FreeTrack and FacetrackNoIR for example. TrackIR seems to be very restrictive with their interface in games (see here: link to en.wikipedia.org ).

I’d like to see some kind of specific squad target designation – for example, squad leader being able to specify a particular tank or ESF or similar to focus on, either to kill or use as a point of reference. It could be an extension of the spot command – hold ‘q’ on the target to make it the squad focus. For some kind of balance, you could make it so that while a target is focused, squad members can’t spot until it is destroyed, or removed.

Absolutely agree with looking around with your head. Since playing Day-Z I sorely miss this feature when playing other FPS, and it would definitely benefit PS2.

* Contextual objective markers. If I’m in a tank, or aircraft, show me where the friendly tank and air groups are so I can join up with them. If I’m an infantry squadleader, let me mark enemy positions I need fire/air support on. If I’m a grunt, show me where the other infantry our focussing their attacks. Let me call for escort or extraction so I’ll be marked for escort vehicles/air to find.

* A more sensible and adaptable squad/team system. Don’t let them exist across different continents, for a start. Let me auto-cull members who aren’t sticking with the group. As a grunt/tank/aircraft let me auto-join the nearest sensible group. Join unaffiliated units who are working together into groups.

* Area commanders for each hex, in charge of the defense if we own the area, or the attack if it’s an enemy area. Let them place markers to coordinate forces, call in support, and lay out attack plans.

* If I’m in a vehicle with turret/passenger spots, let people spawn into them when I’m at a dock. Let me mark my intended destination/mission for people to see.

* If I get to a spawnpoint, let me teleport to other ones, or enter an available vehicle slot.

* Let me change vehicle loadout when docked (for a cost), or trade the vehicle in for resources.

* Fireteams — smaller groups that can form spontaneously, or a squad can be divided into them.

* Let element leaders draw and write on the map (publically or for their squad only), or at least place limited numbers of pre-set icons and markers (rally, attack, defend, advance, flank…)

* Let groups share resources — e.g. if I’m going to be a pilot, I can give up my infantry and vehicle resources to the squad in return for more air resources. In a platoon you could balance the asset emphasis across different squads.

* If I’m an element leader, give me ways to rally troops. First by placing a marker and having people group up manually, with options to cull those who don’t regroup quickly enough, or pay to warp everyone into the same place.

* Formation commands, with markers showing people where to form up and move like in Arma.

* Completely unique equipment/vehicles/weapons for each faction would be nice. More difference between the factions, with signature weapon types (laser/heavy/fast-firing), different gadgets, vehicle types, and overall unique design and warfare philosophies. Basically, make the balance more like Starcraft.

* Make resources and facilities more important. Maybe a linked teleportation network that moves resources from resource-gathering facilities, across the grid to construction facilities, and across the grid again to spawning points. Moving things longer distances = more time, more costs. Different facilities = different resources mined, equipment built or spawned with different costs based on the logistical situation. This way you can affect the flow of battle by prioritising mines, factories or transport nodes. You could even have vehicles to transport resources where the network is broken (i.e. cut-off areas). Or automatic, but vulnerable drones?

* Pay resources to have AIs operate your turrets or do basic transport piloting, maybe even basic, contextual commanding — not matching up to a human, but something to fall back on when manpower is lacking.

* Buy emplaced turrets (on buildings, or transportable and deployable) the same as you buy vehicles, with different types you can earn. If the turret is destroyed, it has to be re-bought.

* In tanks, make the driver control the secondary turret, and the gunner control the main gun.

* Intelligent use of infantry weapons: if your weapon runs out and you’re still clicking fire, autoswitch to the secondary gun. If you click fire when in melee range of an enemy, use the melee weapon.

* If a vehicle is being actively marked with a designator, give it a lead indicator in people’s targeting systems.

* Alarms (flashing lights, sirens, spotlights) in areas that are being invaded.

* Similarly some more flexibility with vehicles would be nice. Let me fill up turret/gun slots at the price of speed, cost, heat, visibility, passenger space, etc. Let me divert power to different systems like in FTL. Give me more variety in chassis, more modularity in general. And make it all distinct by faction!

* Make the teams more visually distinctive, and in particular, make custom outfits be more standardized in colour scheme. No more giraffe Vanu!

* Silly but cool: deployable troop-launcher that fires a drop-pod like an artillery shell.

I could go on pretty much ad infinitum… I have this habit of obsessively mentally improving the games I like, which somewhat self-defeatingly makes me focus on their flaws more. :P Pretty much ruined STALKER for myself that way… Dwarf Fortress too.

Oh yeah, and I forgot maybe my biggest wish of all: a more sensible training and cert system. Way I see it you should be able/have to get training in each aspect of the game starting from “basic grunt 101”, basic teamwork, and the fundamental systems and dynamics of the game before expanding out to different classes, then vehicles, air, commanding, etc. Give away a few varied options right near the start, but raise the bar for using more advanced stuff. Maybe make it achievement based, e.g. get 3 kills at long range in one life to unlock sniper weapons, that sort of thing. Though they have said they’re working on training already, I can’t help but think it’s basically just gonna be some youtube videos you can watch.

Another thought: pay resources for your weapons and equipment every time you equip them. Your record (or average?) for the points you score with a given role/weapon.vehicle etc during one life should determine the discount you get on it. This represents the value for money of your army giving you access to that equipment. Using new equipment without being good at it is prohibitively expensive for the soldier, but she can still try it out and get the opportunity to prove herself with it now and then if she saves up. More advanced weapons = harder to earn discounts for. Basic, standard weapons = basically free. Pay actual cash = get a permanent discount. Maybe discounts partly transfer across to similar weapons.

Achievement based anything? No. No. Fuck no. No. We’ve already seen how “well” that works in TF2. Which is to say half of the people make achievement servers, and have the guns before anyone that actually plays the class well.

Punishing people for being bad or having a bad run is ridiculous. If the resource system doesn’t work, the fix is not to make it more punishing.

I take your points, especially about an average mean score punishing bad runs — but I think I stick by the one-life record/achievement system. :P I actually liked it a lot in TF2, and it’s not like you can make your own PS2 servers – I guess technically you could meet up with buddies from another faction and achievement-grind, but it’d be a lot harder.

If you don’t have skill then this gives you incentive to a) Practise and improve your actual skills (in-game training grounds would help) b) Tag along with teammates to get good scores if your skills are lacking, or c) Just wait until you have a run of good luck. It kinda works out the same after enough time — and you could still get discounts just for time played — it just rewards skill more than persistence… well, I like it anyway. :P

Been in since Day 1. Page Down -> Deconstruct Vehicle. It refunds a portion of the vehicle’s resource cost and you don’t even have to be near a vehicle spawn to do this.

* Unguided bombs.

Would be insanely overpowered against *all* ground targets. You think rocket pods are bad? CCIP GBUs would be worse, because then ESFs or Liberators could make passes at speed and kill tanks and infantry formations with impunity. At least with Rocket Pods you have to have to hover or move slowly to do substantial damage.

Not so. The pods are simply point and shoot. Very little skill involved. However, getting an unguided bomb to hit the target you meant to hit requires a lot more skill to the point that it won’t be overpowered. Rocket pods are spammable because anyone can use them effectively, bombs wouldn’t.

Go play Falcon 4 and load up with some CCIP (Continuously Calculated Impact Point) dumb bombs. They take *very* little skill to use, as CCIP puts a pipper up on your HUD that shows exactly where the bombs will land were you to release them at any given moment (“continuously calculated”). Just line up the target with the pipper, click the pickle, and then veer away while your 1000 lb bomb obliterates everything within hundreds of feet.

Now, CCIP isn’t as accurate as using other types of aiming, such as CCRP – “Continuously Calculated Release Point”, which is a radar-based aiming system that tells the pilot when to release the munition to hit a radar-designated target. But it gets the job done, and if your bombs hit hard enough then wiping out tank columns with CCIP is no problem at all. I don’t really expect SOE to implement a ground radar system, so CCRP is out. Fixed HUD sights wouldn’t work as the bombs would be too difficult to aim unless you were dive bombing, which causes the same problems of high-speed bombing runs.

Maybe you could work it in with a fixed look-down bombsight, but even then it wouldn’t take very long for people to figure out exactly how far you need to lag your target at top speed to score a direct hit.

Good points, but I think it’d be possible to make a workable system along the lines of a fixed bomb-sight. Sure, people could learn it, but then with the rocket-pods are easy to learn, too. I think some more dive-bombing would be interesting, it means you have to line up along a path making you easier to aim at, and the right sights could mean you have to release low, increasing the risk of pancaking/tank-shots/etc. Maybe for lib only, making it a two-man craft with that setup? Iunno, just spit-balling. :P

How another game does it is irrelevant. How powerful bombs are in real life is irrelevant as well. As as for won’t take very lon to learn (considering we’re talking variable drop speed AND height and target speed), see howe often tanks hit aircraft compared to total shots to see that it won’t happen as often due to ease of use as you think it will.

There’s also the fact that you can limit it to one or two runs before out of ammo compared to how long ESFs can stay engaged with rocket pods.

My point was not that they couldn’t be done, but that you couldn’t implement bombs without them feeling either overpowered or useless. They’d have to be as good as or better than the rocket pods to not feel useless, and being better at A2G than rocket pods already pushes you into the realm of overpoweredness.

Oh god. Sorry for that. I have no idea how that post came out like that.

I don’t follow the overpowered ness. Make them powerful yes, but given the skill required to use them effectively would be far harder than rocket pods, I don’t see how they would be overpowered.

My point about tanks is that you seem to think that learning how to use the bomb would be very easy. Tanks hitting air targets is precisely the same as an ESF hitting a tank with an unguided bomb, and tanks hitting ESFs reliably just doesn’t happen, but when it does they’re pretty messed up or dead.

They’d be a niche item that a skilled user would be rewarded more than with rocket pods, both in terms of XP and strategical/tactical

Tanks hitting air targets is precisely the same as an ESF hitting a tank with an unguided bomb

Um, what? They’re nothing alike. An ESF hitting a tank with a bomb is a fast, maneuverable platform hitting a slow, less-maneuverable (unless you’re a Magrider) vehicle. A tank hitting an ESF is the opposite.

They’d be a niche item that a skilled user would be rewarded more than with rocket pods, both in terms of XP and strategical/tactical

How would they be rewarded more than with the rocket pods if the bombs didn’t do significantly more damage? If the user is that skilled using the rocket pods would make you that much deadlier since they’re already easier to aim. The bombs have to have some kind of advantage, or everyone will just use rockets instead. People are going to expect bombs to do more damage than rockets, especially if you can’t carry as many.

And say what you will about how easy the rockets are to use – they are point and click, but at least you have to be relatively low and slow to hit things with them. You have to point the nose of your ESF directly at your target and keep it there long enough to fire off enough rockets, making you vulnerable to ground fire from below and A2A ESFs from above. An ESF armed with bombs could either pound fixed (spawn room entrances, turrets, deployed Sunderers) from medium altitude, or pick off or slow (tank columns, infantry formations) by swooping in at top speed, unloading a bomb, and immediately returning to altitude without slowing down. And if the bombs have to do more damage to be compelling, then that’s going to be broken against ground targets of almost any kind.

Phantoon’s Galaxy idea is interesting, although TBH the Galaxy would feel more like a strategic rather than tactical bomber and since you can’t permanently destroy facilities strategic bombing wouldn’t be that useful. Carpet bombing the Crown would be a waste of munitions because people could just hide inside and avoid the damage completely. The idea would still work best on ESFs, but I can’t see how you could do it without it being more broken than rocket pods.

They’re completely alike. The number of variables you have to take into account are the same in both events. Hitting an ESF is hard, so why are you expecting ESFs to be overpowered with a hard to use bomb?

You’re also not including my full post. I said bombs would be powerful more so than rocket pods, but increased difficulty of use would prevent them from being overpowered. Personally I’d prefer them to remove pods and replace with bombs.

We can argue about the finer points of it, I’m just saying I think there’s room in the game for them.

Oh god. Sorry for that. I have no idea how that post came out like that.

I don’t follow the overpowered ness. Make them powerful yes, but given the skill required to use them effectively would be far harder than rocket pods, I don’t see how they would be overpowered.

My point about tanks is that you seem to think that learning how to use the bomb would be very easy. Tanks hitting air targets is precisely the same as an ESF hitting a tank with an unguided bomb, and tanks hitting ESFs reliably just doesn’t happen, but when it does they’re pretty messed up or dead.

They’d be a niche item that a skilled user would be rewarded more than with rocket pods, both in terms of XP and strategical/tactical use.

You can buy (with certs or station cash) guns to replace the MG that comes as standard.
The best of these (Saron and PPA for Vanu, don’t know for the others) are considerably more powerful and flexible than the primary gun the dirver controls.

I don’t think that’s what he’s asking. He’s saying that the driver should aim and fire the secondary machine gun (or whatever flavor) turret, and that the passenger/gunner should aim and fire the big tank cannon gun. This is closer to how a real tank works (although most real tanks are crewed by 3 people, a driver who just drives, a gunner who operates the main and secondary guns, and a commander that aims the main gun and coordinates vehicle operation).

For the Magrider at least, that wouldn’t work at all (partly because the primary isn’t turret mounted), but also because the secondary IS the main cannon on any form of upgunned Mag.

Its also pretty conventional in games for things to work this way. Keeps vehicles still useful when theres only one person in them.

It also doesn’t address the fact that once you’ve spent some cash, the bigger gun is the one the gunner is controlling. Its just that the default provided gun is so weedy there is no point in having a gunner at all.

Have we been playing the same game? When Vanu attacks, no one looks out or cares about their secondary gun, especially since most of the time it’s unmanned anyways. We’re only looking out for those one hit kills with the main cannon. Any time we see a secondary gun, we’re just glad it’s one less Magrider.

I think he means that with the right upgrades, the secondary gun is powerful enough that it effectively is the main gun. I guess that can be the case? Magriders would have to be an exception to this rule anyway I guess…

I don’t think unguided bombs would necessarily be overpowered – it depends how much damage they do, how wide the splash is, etc. You could limit the capacity for them, as well. It also (mostly) requires passing right over the target. I just think it’d be nice to be able to play with the unguided-bomb aiming mechanic as an alternative to the ‘floating turret’ model… call me a dreamer. :P

Good point about vehicle recycling, I didn’t know you got a refund for it!

I like most of those ideas, save for making healing more complicated, and the auto weapon switch should be an option, not something you can’t toggle off. The healing being more complicated would be pointless under the current model, because it’s the opposite of ArmA. You rush in, shoot people, die, respawn. Death has little meaning.

Going off the idea of zone commanders, perhaps small areas should be merged with one another to provide larger sub-zones for capture, as most areas go undefended as their strategic value is nil compared to a tech lab or the Crown.

More than anything else it needs more of a metagame. The game has a high player turnover, all the outfits I speak to say they constantly gain and lose members. After a few months it’s just fighting the same battles over and over. There are truly epic moments here and there – when the New Conglomorate outfit I’m part of defeneded Arryo Torre against a vastly larger Vanu force was one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

But they’re too far and few between.

So yeah, more metagame stuff – and more than what’s one the current roadmap.

I think you mean strategic game/elements.
Metagaming is say, knowing that Vanu love their magriders, so always bringing extra AT mines/heavies when fighting them, or knowing that a certain outfit often operates in a certain way, and acting to counter that.

I’m honestly not sure what you can do about variety though in PS2 and it’s odd, endless war model. Making an MMOFPS myself, I’d make territory capture a slow process (hours rather than minutes for typical) and have everybody fight over a map until an ultimate victory/defeat condition was reached. Then move on to the next map, restart. Rotate over at least 3 environments, with different starting scenarios each time. If the game is doing well enough, create new maps too.

This idea needs to be fleshed out. It still sounds too much like spotting. How will it differ from spotting? Who can see the designated target? Who is allowed to carry the designator? How will one differentiate between spotted and designated targets?

There’s a couple of ways you can do it, but here’s a possible implementation:

Targeting designatior unlocked through the command tree and available to squad leaders. Can target a location or a vehicle, takes a couple seconds to get a lock (to avoid spam and the issue of tracking a moving reticule) displays a crosshair on the HUD and map for friendly vehicles. If you’re feeling particularly clever, have it convey slight bonuses to anything that fires at the target (not sure what exactly, increased accuracy seems logical but would be hard to do without resorting to autoaim).

I’d say no combat bonuses. Give bonus XP to anyone who attacks the target (if it is a person or vehicle) or performs combat tasks (kills, damages, heals, resupplies, spots, etc.) within a certain distance of the target (if it is a location). This is how BF3 does it and it does a great job of incentivizing a bunch of randoms into following an objective.

Specifically, a UI that gives you the necessary information, and doesn’t arbitrarily lock you out of features.
For example on the latter – on the squad/platoon page, the only action you can take on yourself is to leave the squad. This applies even if you are platoon leader, so as PL, you cannot move between squads in the platoon, or become leader of a squad (if you want to do that, you have to pass PL to someone else, get them to promote you, then get them to return leadership to you).

In terms of information, I’d like the side-bar in game to keep you up to date on the status of all objectives, not just cap points. I’d like, as a commander, to be able to see objective status and locations without having to be within a really short range of them (so I can set waypoints in the right place, and know if it is worth taking my platoon there).

Seeing as it is often quite an effort to go to a Galaxy or Tank terminal, being able to check my vehicle cooldowns before getting there would also be great.

I don’t think I need to say anything about how awful the loadout screens are.

A mini-loadout screen would be nice as I lag every time I bring the screen up, and have died dozens of times in firefights next to a Sunderer as I tried to switch loadouts or just resupply, then get in. Also, being able to change loadouts while INSIDE the Sunderer would be great too.

I love using artillery but I can see it quickly stalemating the game as players memorise angles and locations resulting in a constant stream of explosions at a base’s spawn and vehicle pad without even having to break down the front door first.
Perhaps making it an outfit unlock vehicle and/or only working with a laser designator of some description.

The towable weapon platforms sounds cool, something like being able to setup forward bases as well. Something like circling the wagons with a couple of deployable sunderers, an AA turret and a howitzer AT gun. Maybe even a deployable tank traps and other entrenchment type things.

Yeah, I think this’d be key to making arty work, if it could work at all — that way the arty has the spotter as a vulnerability. Make their laser easy to trace back, and give arty shells big obvious trails, make the firing rate slow, and it might be possible…

If you like the current flight model you’ll probably enjoy my proposed changes to the vehicle controls.

Turning the mouse to the right will accelerate and to the left will brake which in turn locks every odd numbered wheel. Acceleration will be a simple “all or nothing” input requiring you to constantly mouse right to keep in motion, mouse left braking will allow you to accurately scroll between 42 different brake pressures (with only the 42nd setting bringing you to a complete stop). Any slight forward or backward mouse movement will obviously activate the vehicles self destruct. For steering/turning i propose the ergonomic “page up” to turn left and “F1” for right.

With these changes I believe we can finally level the playing field and remove the unfair advantage of players who have either played a different game for 5min, driven a car or just have a firm grip on logic. This should also successfully gate off a lot of the fun for the heathens not willing to spend hours retraining themselves for a clearly superior control system. Those bastards

Yeah reading it back it sounds a lot angrier than the over the top sillyness I was going for, I do enjoy the rest of PS2 but if we’re going to have what myself and others consider baffling flight controls may as well have them equally mad across the board. It’s like having no invert y-axis option on a joypad, even if it isn’t intended it’s still feels like a pretty big “your wrong FU” to anyone who prefers that or have it engrained in their muscle memory.

All i really want is either yaw on mouse axis or at least a option to disable roll on mouse. It would most likely cure the dozens of people upside down at each warpgate. Annoyingly there’s a nonworking menu entry for rebinding/clearing it but I’ve looked through all the forums and it looks like a “fix” is never coming.

Subconsciously i’m probably angry at myself for my inability to change but mostly at them for carpet pull with the binding menu

While I took to the flight controls like a duck to water, I agree with your point that people should be allowed to bind as they wish, especially things like axis etc. PS1 controls were amazing for what you were allowed to customise.

For the larger cap point like tech plants and bio labs. Take out the cap points. Make the SCU the objective. If you take out the scu, you take the plant. I’m tired of waiting 10 min to take these places when you obviously have full control of it.

I wish taking the larger stuff was more like the Titan mode in bf2142 ( or at least the last part of it in the titan). I think the whole mechanic if Control points is stupid anyway. Anything that forces me to sit and do nothing with 20 other people i really want to tk is a bad idea imo.

Give some anti-vehicle stuff to someone besides the heavy. The heavy class does too much

Make flashes faster, like way too fast for its own good. So far I’ve had the most fun driving my flash with the boost.

Even as much as they’ve adjusted it, I still don’t like the fundamental balance between the power of vehicles and infantry, when you combine that with the totally open nature of every base except Biolabs.

Just give us more infantry only facilities. I’m not saying every base should be infantry only, but at least say half of them. At the moment infantry are only safe from being instakilled by distant unseen overpowered vehicles on about 0.5% of the map (oh and wait to see how much worse this is with the new render distance they’re trialing). And pretty much every vehicle rolls with infantry killing weapons, which tells you everything you need to know about how fundamental this problem is.

At the moment if you have a 10v10 infantry fight at a small facility, that’s fun. Now put 2 of the guys on one side in a Liberator, and that fight is more or less over. And you’re still relying on players spending money to have any decent AA capability.

Pull the other one, it’s got bells on. Even around here, people are hugely resistant to the idea of paying £18 for a nearly-universally supported gamepad. You seriously think that there’s a statistically significant number of PC gamers these days with a proper flight stick?

I don’t think you need towable things for sunderer just to solve the issue of air and armor targets. this can be solved just by adding more gun options to Sunderer like a proper anti-air weapon. Which I really think it needs. I hate it when I can’t angle the default Sunderer gun up enough and essentially I’m a sitting duck for aircraft. I do agree on a lot of what was posted, especially the idea of Recon Drones.

PS2 is one of those ambivalent games. It does many things right and at the same time way too many things wrong. But aside from all the questionable gameplay aspects, right now one could describe PS2 with just one word: BUGGED. This is one of the biggest problems with the game. Since the latest patch PS2 is crammed full with game breaking bugs making the game almost impossible to enjoy. Pre patch it wasnt this bad…

I’d like a way to utilising air resources for ground pounders like me. It would be handy if as, say, an engy I could send a recon drone over a designated area. Or for any class to be able to launch a target drone from a flak tower that would let them practice their AA skills.